A Book Review -- Dialogue: And the Art of Thinking Together, By William Isaacs
By David Kimball, Conversation Café Host
This is a great book to make you stop and think about what makes for great dialogue. It helps you ask the right questions such is "How do I define great dialogue?. How can I create the environment for great dialogue? What are the elements that make up a great dialogue?"
The author defines dialogue as a conversation with a center, and not with sides. Instead of focusing on our differences, it channels our energies on something that is newly created. It is even more than finding a consensus as it is a context from which many new associations and prospects can be presented.
Conversation starts out with Deliberation between people. At that time, it can branch to Defending Positions or Dialogue. By Defending Positions, it can be by the use of Skillful Conversation through analysis, reasoning, and the creation of a synthesis of opposites. These are often academic in nature and more formal than informal. Defending positions can also turn into Controlled Discussion which is competitive and involves debating in a polite setting, or verbal brawling in an impolite setting.
But if Deliberation goes the way of Dialogue, it starts with Suspending our prejudices, our emotions, and our inside noise. Much of what we hear will trigger parts of our memories, which will be our own interpretations of words, phrases, events, actions, emotions, etc. This is imposing prejudices on what is being spoken and needs to be suspended in order to practice active listening. Focused listening will lead to Reflective Dialogue which explores underlying causes, rules and assumptions to get deeper questions and framing of problems. The key to this phase is questioning and critical thinking and leads to seeing both the big picture and the atomic parts from the top down and also from the bottom up . From Reflective Dialogue we can go to Generative Dialogue which not only reveals the wisdom of our own reflections, but incorporates the wisdom of others to generate and create ideas that are new not only to us but to everyone involved. Through Generative Dialogue, each person walks away from the table with more than we came to the table. (As opposed to Debate and Skillful Conversation where no value has been added to our thoughts and feelings.)
An entire chapter is dedicated to the Art and Skill of Listening. Listening is critical not only by listening to others, but also by listening to our inner selves through reflection. Although our society is dominated by sight, for dialogue, we need to slow down and operate at the speed of sound.
Another chapter is devoted to Respect. True Dialogue requires that we respect the others, respect their views, their experiences, their expressions, and their feelings. It is to look for the “springs that feed the pool of their experiences” and see their experiences and subsequent knowledge and wisdom as legitimate.
Suspending is given an entire chapter where we focus on the words and the context being spoken without our mind's clutter and prejudices, and where we become aware of our own thoughts and feelings. Not only do we become aware of our own thoughts and feelings, but we become aware of the processes that generate them. By becoming aware of our internal processes, we can then follow them and then we can even direct them or let them flow through our own voice. Instead of voicing that which we feel we should voice, or mimicking someone else's voice (like a religion or a political party), we reveal what is true for ourselves. And this revelation often becomes not only a revelation to others around us, but also to ourselves. We learn about ourselves as we express ourselves.
And so true dialogue is a way in which we can learn about our thoughts and feelings in an environment where we grow and develop in our appreciation not only of others but also of ourselves. Dialogue: What a concept.
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